A Few Centuries Late
by letmeoutwritenow
Summary: Oneshot: They called her a lieutenant, they called her a hero, they called her a legend; but Thalia was just tired.


Disclaimer: Nothing is mine except this story.

Inspired by Gary Jules's song Mad World

One-shot: They called her a lieutenant, they called her a hero, they called her a legend; but she was only just tired.

* * *

><p><em>~ And I find it kind of funny and I find it kind of sad  _

_The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had ~_

Thalia really did not want to become a pine tree again.

She looked around at her Hunters; all forty-four of them, expectantly looking at her and waiting for their next order. Thalia quickly rattled off what they needed to do, and without question, they all went to do what was required.

One girl stayed behind. She looked about thirteen, with auburn hair and silver eyes much older than thirteen.

"They will miss you," she told Thalia quietly.

Thalia exhaled sharply. "Excuse me, my lady?"

"This is a suicide mission for yourself, Thalia, and you know it," Artemis replied sharply. She gripped Thalia's bicep. "I told you that. This is much too dangerous for you to do alone."

Thalia pulled away from the goddess. "And what would you like me to, my lady? Bring one of them with me? I can't…I can't watch another one of them die. I can't. Gods, _I'm_ supposed to be dead myself."

Artemis regained her composure. "Thalia," she chided, "you knew what my Hunt entailed when you pledged yourself to it. You knew you would live much longer than your friends."

"I'm a demigod daughter of Zeus," Thalia said in reply. "Monsters would love to kill me. I thought I'd be dead by now, my lady. I…I didn't think I would live to be seven hundred years old."

Artemis regarded her lieutenant carefully. Then, without another word, she disappeared to go back to Olympus. She had made it clear, earlier, that she would not be helping Thalia with a mission that would lead to her death.

Thalia climbed up a pine tree, laughing to herself at the irony. If she died in this tree, Zeus would probably make her become the tree, like he had done so many years ago. She didn't want that to happen. She wanted to die.

She wasn't trying to be cynical at all. She just knew her time was up; she had cheated death countless times, and her only real friend still alive was Artemis. Any Hunters that had been in the Hunt when Thalia was alive had died, and Thalia wanted to join them.

Thalia's second-in-command, a daughter of Hermes, called out to her, letting her know that everyone was ready. It was a blind mission; on the other side of a castle wall lay something dangerous. Thalia and the Hunters did not know what. All the Hunters knew was that they needed to get an opening in the wall, and Thalia was to in alone.

As she jumped down from the pine tree and ran toward the wall, where a few girls had made a hole, an old feeling overcame her. Gods, she hadn't felt this feeling in over six hundred years; the feeling of fear.

Thalia's mind flashed back to when she was twelve years old, running around with Luke Castellan and Annabeth Chase. (She had to recall friends from her past by their last names, because she knew she would forget them if she didn't.) They didn't know what was going to happen next. Their skills weren't perfectly mastered, and there was a huge possibility they could die any minute.

As strange as it sounded, Thalia missed that feeling. Being a Hunter was one of the best experiences of her long life, but there was something unnatural about running around with a group of girls who would never die. Mortality had anchored Thalia, given her a reality, and she needed that back.

"Good luck, Thalia," the girls whispered to her as she grippe Aegis in her hand.

"Thanks," Thalia said, mentally preparing herself. Artemis had told her that this was a suicide mission, which meant that Thalia had to prevent the other Hunters from being harmed, but let the threat kill her. It wasn't suicide, exactly; she didn't want to commit suicide. She was just so tired of spending year after year roaming the world, shooting arrows at monsters, and not aging.

Many years that had passed had slipped Thalia's mind; she found it worrisome when girls asked her if she remembered that one time when they were trapped in an Echidna's lair, and she couldn't; she found it uncomfortable when girls asked her if she remembered a fallen sister, and she couldn't; she found it downright unbearable when girls asked her the story behind her turning into a tree, and she couldn't remember every single detail.

"We'll be waiting here when you come back," one girl told her. "You can do it!"

Thalia winced as she heard an desperate scream from behind the wall, followed by what sounded like bones cracking.

She said a quick prayer to Zeus, something she hadn't done in five hundred years.

* * *

><p>"You have to go!" Thalia screamed.<p>

What had been behind the wall was much worse than she anticipated. It was an old human trafficking development, and massive piles of bloody bodies had surrounded her. Some of them were still alive. Most of them were dead. They weren't killed and sold by humans; they were killed and sold by dozens of Cyclops, most of which were chasing Thalia.

"We're not leaving without you!" one of the Hunters shouted back. "Hunters, bows at the ready!"

"It's useless," Thalia called, running as fast as she could. She wanted to join her friends in Elysium, that was true, but she didn't want to be a Cyclops meal in front of her Hunters.

Her voice was drowned out by the Cyclops. Two of them effortlessly broke through the wall which had taken the Hunters over twenty minutes to put a hole in.

The Hunters' arrows bounced harmlessly off the Cyclops' skin.

"Thalia, over here!" they screamed as they ran. Thalia ignored the pain in her legs as she followed them to a small clearing in the woods.

"Are you hurt?" her second-in-command demanded. "You were in there forever!"

Thalia was hurt. She had the deepest gash she'd ever had on her back, but she didn't want to show them; she was confident she had a concussion; her ankle was either sprained or broken; and her stomach had been sprayed with poison.

Thalia could feel her life slipping away. She was about to tell her Hunters her last wishes when her vision went black.

* * *

><p>She awoke staring at Hades, who was looking at her with a disgusted expression.<p>

"Nice to see you too, Uncle," Thalia grumbled. She looked around. They were in a dark room, and it smelled like the Underworld. Her wounds were healed and she didn't have a splitting headache anymore, so Thalia assumed she was dead.

"You're not dead," Hades told her, rolling his eyes. "I'm giving you a choice."

"What kind of choice?" Thalia demanded. "Is this allowed? Does Zeus know?"

Hades held up a hand. "It's allowed. It's not like you've never cheated death before." He regarded his niece seriously. "I'm letting you choose if you want to stay here in the Underworld and go to Elysium, or stay alive for a few more hundred years. It's your choice."

Thalia didn't even have to think.

"Here," she blurted. "Um, I'd like to go to Elysium, Lord Hades. I'm…tired."

"Oh?" Hades asked, not looking amused.

"I can't do it anymore," she explained, exasperated. "I miss my old friends. I'm losing my memory of before I was a Hunter. I don't want to forget some of the best times of my life."

Hades nodded. "You've forgotten people? That's quite normal actually. You'll be fine."

"I don't want it to be normal," Thalia argued. Her mind flashed back to following a satyr up a hill; electrocuting a dark-haired boy with sea green eyes; fighting a golden-eyed old friend of hers; hugging a blonde-haired girl with owl earrings; watching them all die.

Hades accepted her decision. He pointed her toward a door, and without hesitating, Thalia stepped through.

She was greeted with smiling faces, enveloping hugs, blue cake, Green Day music (which had disappeared some time in the twenty-second century), and Thalia was home.


End file.
